Tesla teams with Toyota

Electric car maker Tesla said it will build its 4-door Model S at the site of the former GM-Toyota joint venture, New United Motor Manfuacturing Inc., in Fremont, California and will employ about 1,000 workers at the shuttered factory to produce 20,000 EVs annually. In addition, Toyota is investing a reported $50 million in the car maker, which is headquartered in San Carlos, Calif., across the San Fransico Bay from the Fremont plant. The tie-up ends speculation that Tesla was going to build its car at a site in Downey, California, a Los Angeles suburb. Tesla is promising to deliver the Model S by 2012, a timetable that seems overly ambitious for the firm to do on its own, compared to its Roadster, which is largely produced by Lotus in England. The Toyota connection may allow Tesla to hit that mark and comes after the recent hire of former Toyota product engineering general manager Gilbert Passin, who ran Toyota's assembly operation in Cambridge, Canada.